


citizens of the greenwood

by polkadot



Category: Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: Established Relationship, Five Plus One, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:17:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkadot/pseuds/polkadot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Alec or Maurice said no, and one time they said yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	citizens of the greenwood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drumbot_beta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drumbot_beta/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, dear recipient! Thank you to my lovely beta Hyarrowen. ♥

i.

Maurice had known joy before, with Clive. But he had not dreamed that he could know such prolonged happiness, such contentment. It seemed to him that the world would frown more on this than any other thing – that two men inclined as they were could be happy together, instead of miserable. A carnal lust, shameful and unmanly, yes. Not a sustained comfort and peace. When he thought that he had come so near to throwing his life away, to giving way to the black despair and loneliness... 

It was not always peace and happiness. They fought, as all men do. Having thrown away a sure job in the Argentine to follow his heart instead, Alec could be stubborn about money. He lived with Maurice, because it was necessary, and because they each found that waking up in the other's arms was a source of joy, but he took no pleasure in relying on Maurice and his superior financial position.

Maurice arrived at home one evening to find Alec sitting on the hearthrug, laughing. This would not have been such a surprise, as Alec loved to laugh, if Alec had not been covered head to toe in black soot. So too was much of the room.

“The chimney wasn't drawing properly,” Alec said, cheerfully. “Tried to fix it. Afraid I didn't.”

Maurice took off his coat, hanging it carefully out of reach of the destruction. “You look like a chimney-sweep.”

“Perhaps. A bit old to be a chimney-sweep nowadays.”

“You should have hired someone,” Maurice said. “It's no job for you. Or for me.” This he added, in case Alec should think to essay the challenge again, with another pair of hands to assist.

Alec stood, an alarming shower of soot beginning an inexorable slide downwards. “And what is my job? You said you would chuck yours and we would find work together. That's not happened.”

He had said that. It had been the dream, to chuck up everything and leave the old world behind. He'd half imagined them woodcutters in a forest together somewhere, living on little but never minding it. Not so easy in the light of day. 

“The work I'm fit for is like this,” Alec said, gesturing at his blackened clothes. “Not this exactly. Might be I'm not so good at this. But I'm a rough fellow, Maurice. I have to do something or go mad.”

“You're my rough fellow.”

“Sure and I am.” His face had softened, just a bit. “And you're my toff. But we can't go on like this. I won't be a kept man.”

Maurice had lost a lover once, when Clive turned away. It had nearly killed him. He was older now, and wiser, but he also loved more deeply. His days would be darker without Alec in them. “You want to leave?” There was something caught in his throat. It must be the soot.

Alec snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don't be daft. You won't be getting rid of me that easily, I dessay. Still, facts is facts, and I'm for getting a job. Even if you don't like what it is, even if I'm all over mud and dirt and it don't pay well.”

The flood of relief that washed over Maurice nearly made him dizzy. “Wait here,” he said.

When he returned, Alec hadn't moved, but his eyebrows shot up his forehead. “What are you wearing?”

If his mother, or sisters, or Clive, or, worst, the servants, had seen Maurice at that moment, he must have died of mortification. Even now, he had a moment's pang of worry. Perhaps, by wearing Alec's clothes, he intimated that his own were too good to risk ruination in the soot, and that Alec's were less worthy. However true that was, it was of no matter here and now. “I thought I might help,” he said, and took three steps into the room.

For a moment, Alec looked at him, and then he threw back his head and laughed. “Come here,” he said, beckoning imperiously.

The servants were out tonight. It was Dawkins' half-day, and Cook always left after seeing to their dinner. What either thought of their arrangement, Maurice didn't know, and didn't intend to find out. Dawkins had been with him for years, and most likely knew more about him than he did himself. While Dawkins might not approve of Alec, he would never breathe a word of his master's dealings to anyone. 

Thus there was no one in the flat to see when Alec took Maurice in his arms and kissed him, firmly. Soot got everywhere, as soot will, and Maurice was soon as dirty as he could ever remember being. Yet he could not seem to care. In Alec's clothes, in Alec's arms, he needed nothing more; and, blissful, they presently retired to the kitchen, where a great deal of cold water and shouting was employed. From thence, wet and cold, they found their way to the bedroom, and successfully warmed themselves again.

~

ii.

Clive, not knowing Maurice's new Town address, had at last written to him at his mother's. Finding the letter there on a visit, Maurice took it back with him after, not quite knowing why. He had fully intended never to meet Clive again. That part of his life was over now, dead and forgotten.

Alec found the letter sitting on Maurice's desk a week later, when he was writing to Fred in the Argentine. “Might be you should meet him,” he said, tapping it on the surface.

“That's all over between us. He's the past, Alec.”

Alec leaned back in the chair. “I know. He's not the one in your bed. But he knows about us, and I'm thinking if he wants to meet, you shouldn't be ignoring him.”

Between them the memory of blackmail attempted hung unspoken. Maurice remembered the British Museum as if it were yesterday, before truths had been uncovered and his world reinvented.

“He wouldn't speak of me to anyone.” That would risk the intelligent surmising what they had been to each other. “He bears me no ill-will, I believe.”

Alec's eyes were sharp. “Me, for coming to your bed when I ought not have. For making you give in to your lust.”

That was possible. Yet Maurice thought Clive would hesitate to bear ill-will towards someone like Alec. It would imply that they were on the same level, somehow, and Clive would never consider Alec to be a man like himself. A man, yes, even Clive must see that. Maurice's eyes unconsciously followed the lines of Alec's body, as affecting now as they had ever been. But a man Clive would bear ill-will for, would see as a threat? It was unlikely.

“I am in charge of my own lust,” he said, and placed his hands on Alec's shoulders. 

“Aye,” Alec said. He had been at work all that week, and the sweat-smell still clung to him. Maurice did not find it unpleasant. “But he could make trouble.”

“I do not want to see him again,” Maurice said, clearly, so that there should be no mistake. 

He no longer loved Clive Durham. That had died. Still a vestige remained that warmed at the mention of his name, but that signified not. It was the broad shoulders of the man who loved him that filled his heart, not the small frame of the boy he had met at Oxford. The former had nothing to fear from the latter; and yet Maurice wanted nothing more than to make a clean break of matters. Their new life was pure, a precious thing guarded from the outside world. It did not need old regrets and bitter memories pushing at the latch.

Alec was watching him in the mirror that hung over the desk. “You choose me over him.”

Maurice met his eyes, squarely, one man to another. “Always.”

~

iii.

They went to Paris together, that last June before the war. After, Maurice would remember only snippets: walking by the Seine, climbing to the newly-completed Sacré-Cœur, finding bookshops and bakeries down back streets. It was an idyllic summer. He knew that perhaps he only remembered it that way because of what would follow, and yet it seemed to him that it had been perfect in every particular.

No one inquired into their domestic arrangements, not in the worldly-wise streets of Paris. Their morning expedition to Sacré-Cœur was repeated under cover of nightfall, as they lost themselves in the welcoming underworld of Montmartre. To Maurice's eyes, the decadence they found there was shocking, but Alec loved it. Here their differences mattered not at all. They were two lovers on a summer's night, and whatever else might be said, it was immaterial.

“Should we go back to the hotel?” 

It was deep into the night, and the summer sun would rise before too many more hours had passed. Yet the music in their Montmartre dance hall showed no signs of dying. Maurice had been forced to lean in quite close to Alec's ear to pose his question, and even as he did so, Alec's hands found his hips, bringing him closer still.

“No.” The word was a rumble against his cheek, and Maurice found himself thrilling to it. It was the pulse of the beat under his feet – the scent of Alec in his nostrils. 

Around the dance hall, there were people of all kinds, shapes, and sizes. Near them, two women embraced, dancing together with mouths close enough to touch. Many men were themselves dressed as women. Maurice knew that there was cocaine upstairs, although it did not interest him nearly as much as the man in his arms.

“We can't dance together,” he demurred, the words hoarse even in his own ears.

One of Alec's hands left his waist to travel up his back, pulling him close. “If the police come, we'll have warning. My friend Robert told me that's how they do it here. We'll dance with the women then.”

It was a clever system, Maurice had to admit. One of the women next to them smiled at him, her brightly lipsticked mouth as cheerful as the shine in her lover's eyes. A sense of shared daring, of illegal camaraderie, passed between them, and he found himself smiling back.

If this was England, he would never have dared, even then. The idea of someone finding him in the arms of his lover in public was beyond comprehension. The degradation and humiliation of it would be unspeakable. Having money and social standing, he might escape, but he would be ruined forever. And Alec, possessing neither, would bear the full brunt of the law.

But this was not England. This was France. 

In his ear, Alec said, “Dance with me, mon cœur.” 

The French was pronounced so indifferently that it took Maurice a moment to understand. When he did, he took his courage in his hands and began to dance, watching the curve of Alec's smile.

~

iv.

The war came.

“We can go to the Argentine,” Alec said. “We can find work there. We don't have to stay.”

“I do.” Maurice stared out the window of their flat. It had been too wonderful to last. He had wondered in his doubtful moments if it would be, but he hadn't quite expected the world to be the thing to burst into flames.

Alec paced behind him, caged lion in his den. “This country would throw us into prison for the crime of loving. We owe it nothing.”

Intellectually, Maurice knew it was true. He was an outlaw by chance of birth, a citizen of the greenwood rather than a subject of King George. By rights his first loyalty should be to the man he loved, not to the nation that considered him unnatural, immoral, and hellbound.

“Come away with me to the Argentine,” Alec's voice, beloved, whispered persuasively into his ear.

They could do it. It would be warm there. Alec could find work easily, and Maurice was sure he could too. He had enough to support them on for a year at the least, and by that time they should have settled. For a moment, he let himself imagine it. Sunshine and laughter, freedom and Alec's bronze face, far away from war and strife.

But if they left they could never come back. Not after running away from a war. Not after fleeing together. Not after throwing away everything to chase after their own happiness. 

“They say it will only be a short war,” Maurice said, holding Alec's hand in his own, so tightly that it must have hurt. “I'll be back in time for Christmas.”

When Alec sighed, he sounded world-weary, and much older than he actually was. “You're not going anywhere I don't go. Sure and I'd be everlasting guilty if I went to the Argentine without you.”

“You should go,” Maurice said, turning to face him, leaving the window and its grey view behind. “No one will notice if you vanish and reappear after the war. You can be with your family, and -”

Alec shook his head, not letting Maurice finish. “You're my family now. I won't be leaving you behind. It's together we'll be coming home for Christmas.”

The flat was nothing like the home Maurice had grown up in. As a boy, when he had imagined his adult home, it had been a large estate in the countryside, with fields and ponds and rolling hills. Yet it had also had a wife and children, for he had known nothing else to imagine, and neither of those would ever come true.

Home. Could it be as simple as that?

Home was falling asleep in the middle of one of Alec's stories, and waking up tucked under the blankets. Home was Alec's cheerful tuneless singing, as he continued to attempt to mend things around the house that he had no business mending. Home was Alec's arms – Alec's bed – Alec's smile. Perhaps he should be afraid, after his experience with Clive, that he had given over his happiness into another's keeping again. But Maurice could find no fear.

“Christmas,” he said, like a promise, and kissed Alec right there in the middle of the study, even though Dawkins and Cook were only downstairs.

~

v.

Millions gone.

When Maurice came back from the war – not for Christmas, but four long years later – the world was changed. That last carefree Parisian summer had vanished into the past, never to be reclaimed. The boys he had grown up with had laid down in French trenches and poured their life's blood into the soil, never to rise again.

Millions dead. Millions maimed and wounded.

He had seen horrors that he could never have imagined, in his peaceful happy home with Alec. The world had called their love unnatural, but it had not begun to know the meaning of the word. Unnatural had nothing to do with love and happiness. It had to do with broken bodies, demon screams, poison gas, the sounds a man makes slowly dying. It was trenches and barbed wire, death and rape and torture, unspeakable horrors and then unspeakable horrors again. It meant thousands and thousands of men dead in a single day.

Their flat was dusty. Cook hadn't known to expect him, and Dawkins hadn't come back from the war. Gallipoli. 

On the stairs, Maurice heard singing, or what might charitably have been called singing.

“Together for Christmas after all,” Alec said, breaking off _Good Christian Men Rejoice_ when Maurice burst into the study, having taken the rest of the stairs two at a time. “You did promise me. Never doubted you for a moment.”

It felt impossible that they should both have lived. Maurice had hoped. But in a war-zone, it had been hard to keep in touch; he suspected that Alec must have been in a hospital at one point, from the way he stood. Maurice had known they were both alive six months ago, and on that he had built his fragile hopes. Fragile, for the Hundred Days Offensive had come right at the end, and Alec could so easily have been one of the million dead, killed on the brink of peace.

“You stare like you've seen a ghost,” Alec said, and then took a stiff step forward, closing the distance that Maurice could not.

“It feels as if you _are_ a ghost. As if we both are.”

Alec held him tightly, arms as strong as ever, and Maurice shut his eyes.

“Not ghosts,” Alec said. “I h'aint fought my way through hell to get back to you, if you plan to be a ghost. I want a flesh-and-blood man in my bed.”

Perhaps they'd willed it. Perhaps they'd said no to death, refused to join the millions of souls it stole. (But surely every one of those millions of souls had said no to death when it came for them, stalking its relentless path through the devastation. What had made them more special than the others?) Perhaps it was pure dumb luck.

However they'd survived, Maurice wasn't going to quarrel. Not sure if he was going to laugh or cry, he settled for kissing Alec instead, with all the fierceness in his body.

~

i.

They were old now, so very old.

“Did you ever think we would make it this far?” Maurice asked, tracing circles on Alec's skin. The muscles were mostly gone now, but he still knew every freckle, even in the dark.

“Thought I'd be dead before forty. Specially in the War. Thought I'd be dead by morning, then.”

Maurice could remember when the beauty of youth had meant so much to him. He'd been beautiful himself, once. Not any longer; not with his vanished hair and his growing paunch and the wrinkles that Alec diplomatically said made him look distinguished. 

The young ones today had so much fire. They fought for their rights – they thought they _had_ rights. Perhaps some day soon they would succeed in making it legal for a man to love a man, if you did it in private and didn't scare the horses. Perhaps some day, in the long distant future, one of today's young men would be able to kiss his lover in the street, when they were both as old and grey as Maurice and Alec.

Maurice couldn't imagine kissing Alec in the street. They had always been outlaws of the greenwood, living their life in the margin of society, finding their happiness between the lines of history. Oh, over the years, there had been friends – new friends, forged out of truth instead of lies. Their flat had become the centre of small gatherings, laughter and talk and good wine, nothing to attract the attention of the authorities. But they had never protested in public, had never joined any of the societies or reform groups. Let the young carry those banners, full of vigour and courage.

Loving Alec had always been enough rebellion for Maurice.

He moved closer to Alec, sticking his cold feet under Alec's warm legs, ignoring the grumble of discontent. “Glad we stayed alive.”

“Yes,” Alec said, his voice a rasp in the darkness, “yes.”

~


End file.
